The present invention relates generally to resource management systems by which networked computers cooperate in performing at least one task too complex for a single computer to perform. More specifically, the present invention relates to a resource management system which dynamically and remotely controls networked computers to thereby permit them to cooperate in performing tasks that are too complex for any single computer to perform. Advantageously, software programs for converting a general purpose computer network into a resource managed network are also disclosed.
Resource Management consists of a set of cooperating computer programs that provides an ability to dynamically allocate computing tasks to a collection of networked computing resources (computer processors interconnected on a network) based on the following measures:    an application developer/user description of application computer program performance requirements;    measured performance of each application programs;    measured workload (CPU processing load, memory accesses, disk accesses) of each computer in the network; and    measured inter-computer message communication traffic on the network.
Many attempts to form distributed systems and environments have been made in the past. For example, several companies and organizations have networked multiple computers to form a massively parallel supercomputer of sorts. One the best known of these efforts is SETI@home, which is organized by SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), a scientific effort aiming to determine if there is intelligent life out in the universe.
Typically, the search means the search of billions of radio frequencies that flood the universe in the hopes of finding another civilization that might be transmitting a radio signal. Most of the SETI programs in existence today, including those at UC Berkeley, build large computers that analyze that data from the telescope in real time. None of these computers look very deeply at the data for weak signals nor do they look for a large class of signal types. The reason for this is because they are limited by the amount of computer power available for data analysis. To extract the weakest signals, a great amount of computer power is necessary. It would take a monstrous supercomputer to get the job done. Moreover, SETI programs could never afford to build or buy that computing power. Thus, rather than use a huge computer to do the job, the SETI team developed software to use thousands of small computers, all working simultaneously on different parts of the analysis, to run the search routine. This is accomplished with a screen saver that can retrieve a data block over the internet, analyze that data, and then report the results back to SETI.
Several commercial companies are developing and implementing similar capabilities. Moreover, several companies, most notably IBM, have developed networks where each networked desktop computer becomes a parallel processor in a distributed computer system when the desktop computer is otherwise idle.
It will be appreciated that these approaches to computing in a distributed environment do not provide a system that is both flexible and adaptive (or at least easily adapted) to changes in system configuration, performance bottlenecks, survivability requirements, scalability, etc.
What is needed is a Resource Management Architecture which permits flexible control, i.e., allowing autonomous start up and shut down of application copies on host machines to accommodate changes in data processing requirements. What is also needed is functionality included in the Resource Management Architecture which permits the Resource Management Architecture to determine the near-optimal alignment of host and application resources in the distributed environment. It would be desirable to have a user-friendly technique with which to specify quality of service (QoS) requirements for each host, each application, and the network in which the hosts are connected. What is also needed is instrumentation to ensure that the specified QoS goals are being met.